Surfacing…and work ethic

December 12, 2007

Surfacing from Predator novel writing and revisions just for a moment to say more interviews with the bookless are forthcoming, along with a sneak peek at Ben Templesmith’s cover art for the limited edition Shriek, and excellent news about Finch.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten almost a dozen emails saying basically, “Jeff, how do you accomplish so much?” I really don’t feel like I’m doing that much, in fact I often feel downright lazy, but in case my process might be of help, here it is: Prioritize your workload to start with the stuff that takes the most mental energy–and make sure you get enough sleep, exercise, and the right kind of food.

So, that breaks down to this schedule during the week:

7:15 – 7:45: Exercise bike (excellent opportunity to read books for review)
8:00: Breakfast of four eggs and two pieces of wheat toast
8:30 – 11:30: Writing of first-draft fiction in longhand, sometimes at a coffee shop (nothing takes more mental energy for me, so preferably must be fresh…or do it late at night, sometimes), with some book review writing on the tail end of that time if I run out of fiction inspiration
11:30 – 12:30: Brisk 30-minute walk (for brainstorming) and check email. Also includes lunch, which lately has been a good healthy salad with turkey and mushrooms, spinach leaves, etc.
12:30 – 3:00: Typing up of first draft fiction and writing of first-draft book review, other nonfiction material, sometimes career stuff; nutritious snack, like nuts or protein bar
3:00 – 4:00: Nap, watch TV, or follow up on email, PR, etc.
4:00 – 6:00: Weightlifting and some cardio (upper body at home three times a week, lower body two times a week)
6:00 – 7:00: Dinner (chicken or fish with vegetables or protein smoothie with snack)
7:00 – 8:30: Outer limit for continuing work on responding to email, finishing off reviews, etc.
8:30 – 11:00: Time off, movies, TV, etc., and fruit for snack
11:00 – 7:15 – Sleep

And repeat. Weekends are more leisure oriented, in that I don’t push myself to finish fiction. Usually a long walk on Sundays, racquetball on Saturday. I do a lot of my book review reading and prep for Amazon posts on weekends.

Now, that’s best-case. Sometimes it doesn’t happen exactly like that, but that’s the goal. Every weekday. Sometimes we goof off more in the evening or have some wine or a jack-and-coke, or whatever. But I strive to meet that optimum schedule. I’d say I hit it about 75-85% of the time, which is enough to be efficient.

The thing that has really had to change with more fiction deadlines, though, I have to say, is how I access my email and the internet. I no longer turn on my computer until lunchtime and I try to turn it off by around 7 or 8 pm, tops. I find myself allocating more blocks of time to answer email, rather than just answering when I get an email. This has given me much more piece (and peace!) of mind and I find my brain is literally less fractured and fragmented. I think it’s a lot healthier to do it this way.

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Comments

I’ll tell you man, if I were that organized I might accomplish something too! :D

Here’s how my workweek goes:

4:00 – 5:00 am; smoke some cigarettes while the coffee drips, scratch my balls, slop some coffee into the cup, smoke and read email, groklaw, ecstatic days and digg.
5:00 – 5:20 am; watch the local news for weather info.
5:20 – 5:45 am; get clean, maybe shave.
5:45 – 6:00 am; figure out what I need in my car (to read archeology or pay bills, maybe a spare pack of smokes; attitude adjustment if I remember) for the workday.
6:00 am – 6:00 pm; drive to/from work or work, in between times smoking cigarettes while reading archeology or paying bills in my car.
6:00 – 8:00 pm; smoke and read email, groklaw, ecstatic days and digg, Maybe a favored beer … or more; attitude adjustment? Remind me.
8:00 – 9:00 pm; get ready to sleep, read fiction. (Currently the second Linden book of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. I hope it picks up soon.)
9:00 pm – 4:00 am; sleep.

Friday and Saturday I do whatever housework I’m gonna do this week, in the morning; in the afternoon I fuck off. Sometimes on Friday morning I’ll get some work done on the Spaceport project or grind some steel into potential knives. Often on Saturday night my son Adam will bring my grandson Asher over; we fly the Helicopter and run a movie. Maybe some or a lot of beer. Crash.

Sunday:
4:00 to 6:00 am; wake up without alarm, then smoke some cigarettes while the coffee drips, scratch my balls, slop some coffee into the cup, smoke and read email, groklaw, ecstatic days and digg.
6:00 – 10:00 am; do laundry, get clean including shave. (Until it stopped, I used to watch Breakfast with the Arts between 7:00 and 9:00 am. I miss Karina Huber. Check out Hazmat Modine sometime.))
10:00 – 10:30 am; figure out what, if anything, I need to take to Waffles.
10:30 am – 12:30 pm; Waffles.
12:30 – 8:00 pm; smoke and read email, groklaw, ecstatic days and digg, drinking beer and finishing up the laundry.
8:00 – 9:00 pm; get ready to sleep, read fiction.
9:00 pm – 4:00 am; sleep.

I’m not complaining, but your schedule sounds a whole lot more invigorating. ;-)

The last time I had eight hours of sleep was eight years ago, before kid #1 was born. Eight loooooooong years. I had a dream once that I got seven hours of sleep and was so excited that I called everyone I knew. In my dream, everyone was blissfully excited. I woke up to my dog barfing on my bed. I checked the clock. It was two a.m. All of the children woke up and wanted to see the barf. My son wanted to smell it. Nice.

If I don’t get 7 to 8 hours of sleep, and that continues for more than a day, I’m simply unrecognizable as a human being. And then I really have to stay away from the computer because if I post anything, say a comment to someone’s post, it comes out shrill and militant. LOL.

[…] The Ideal Schedule One of the blogs that I follow is written by Tobias Buckell.Ã‚Â He made a post late last week titled Work Ethic, where he laid out what his work schedule looks like on a typical day (he also refers to another author, Jeff VanderMeer, who had written about the same topic in his post called Surfacing…and work ethic). […]

About Jeff VanderMeer

Photo by Kyle Cassidy

Jeff VanderMeer has been named the 2016-2017 Trias Writer-in-Residence for Hobart-William Smith College. His most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) from FSG, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. The trilogy also prompted the New Yorker to call the author “the weird Thoreau” and has been acquired by publishers in 28 other countries, with Paramount Pictures acquiring the movie rights. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic.com, Vulture, Esquire.com, and the Los Angeles Times. He has taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference, lectured at MIT, Brown, and the Library of Congress, and serves as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen writing camp . His forthcoming novel from Farrar, Straus and Giroux is titled Borne. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, the noted editor Ann VanderMeer. You can contact him at pressinfo at vandermeercreative.com. (Author photo by Kyle Cassidy.) More...